Shattered Illusions
by Leafdiaries
Summary: Written for Saiun Challenge fic Theme: Broken. Kijn's assistant and friend Yuuri Kei thought he knew the masked man better than anyone else. Characters: Yuuri, Kijn, evil shadow of Reishin


Undersecretary of Finance Yuuri Kei waited in the front room of his boss's manor as instructed by a very nervous and apologetic servant, who bowed repeatedly as she backed out the door. Several minutes had passed already, but Secretary Kou had still not appeared.

Yuuri sighed briefly, bounced on his toes humming cheerfully and looked down at the decorative box he held in his hand. Really, he had no business delivering Houju's office mail to him at home, he thought with a sheepish grin. The truth was that he missed Houju. Work was boring without him, not to mention piling up at an alarming rate. He knew better than anyone how important Houju was to their department, unlike a certain crimson devil whom the imperial court had recently dismissed. Yet, because of the red menace that was Reishin Kou, Houju had taken a week's leave from work, a vacation, an unheard of event in the history of Secretary Kou's tenure.

Yuuri glanced at the silent doors again and sighed. He walked to a large, latticed window that overlooked a sea of yellow petals of all shades that populated the complex and lovely Kou garden.

_Such a peaceful place_, he thought. _So like him_.

The click of the doorknob had Yuuri whirling around with a wide smile spreading on his face. However, the smile stalled when the same anxious servant reappeared, bowing her way in as she had bowed her way out.

"Please, Undersecretary Kei, the master will not see you," she said, her voice quavering, her body hunched over in a deep bow where she remained.

"Is he ill?" Yuuri asked, so concerned that his body moved forward on its own.

"Please, sir, I am only to tell you that he will not see you," she answered, still bowed low.

"Did he give no reason? Am I to come back again?" he asked, advancing on the trembling woman.

"Please, sir," she answered, shifting on her feet uncomfortably. "May I see you out?"

"That won't be necessary," Yuuri answered, his voice catching in his throat. "Thank you."

After a moment's hesitation, the servant bowed herself out again.

"Won't see me?" he complained to no one. He stared at the closed door. "He won't see _me_?"

Surely, Houju had his reasons for sending him away so coldly. Perhaps the servant had the message wrong. Yuuri could think of nothing he had done to make him angry, though he had noticed that Houju had grown more distant since his confrontation with Reishin several days ago.

In all the years he had known Houju, since the days of the Nightmare Exam, Yuuri had never seen him lose his temper, though an icy glare from him struck terror in his subordinates' hearts. However, that day, facing off with Reishin, Houju had become uncontrollably violent. Had Yuuri not intervened, he might have pummeled that haughty, useless face into a red mess.

Yuuri was horrified to witness his ideal of grace and refinement reduced to a raging animal, no matter how much Reishin might have deserved his attack. Likewise, with the Gyoshidai watching everyone for suspicious behavior, guilt by association was enough to stir an investigation, and Yuuri would not permit Houju to be dragged through such an insulting experience.

When he finally managed to draw his superior away from Reishin's office, Yuuri found Houju to be inconsolable. In the quiet of a private room, he helped his friend's trembling fingers untie the mask he never had to wear with Yuuri. He brushed his silken handkerchief over the lovely alabaster cheeks glistening with tears. He gathered the powerful and elegant shoulders, racked with sobbing, into his arms and bore the weight of his grief until it was spent. He listened with unwavering support to Houju's outrage at his family's letter, recalling him from Kiyou.

Yuuri took several purposeful steps toward the doors, but slowed to a halt. Why did he hesitate? He had not hesitated that day, and he knew his friend needed him no less now. They knew each other better than anyone else knew them, so he was sure he could be helpful. Not even Reishin knew Houju as well as he did, but that was because he never cared to.

"What a fool," Yuuri muttered sadly.

To think that Kou snob would place such little value on the friendship of a great man like Houju. He would never know or care how often he stood by Reishin when others belittled him. He would never understand how he worried about him. Even now, Reishin had shaken the dust of Kiyou from his shoes and rode off to Kou Province, carefree and unconcerned about the disaster he'd left in his wake. He hadn't even bothered to say goodbye to the friend who had wept uncontrollably for the irreparable injury Reishin had done to himself.

Yuuri grabbed the doorknob, but then noticed that he still held the box in his hand. He felt like a fool. He had come to see Houju, to drop off the mail, to chit chat, to fill his lonely time like always, like nothing had changed. Clenching his eyes shut, he bowed his head. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Something ugly and venomous moved under the dark foundations of the court, and its first victims had been Reishin and, by extension, Houju. Who would be next? What hand administered the poison? Who and what would survive?

Undersecretary Kei decided then and there that only that which _should_ survive _would_ survive. He needed to know if his friendship with Houju would still be standing when the dust cleared, or if it was as disposable as Houju had treated it today.

As he made his way down the wide hallway lined with windows, he found himself holding his breath and stepping as softly as he could, so as not to disturb the obtrusive silence. As often as he had been to the Kou manor, he wondered why he felt like a stranger today, an unwelcomed intruder.

_Here. Houju's study._ Yuuri stopped before a wooden door, less ornate than the others he'd passed. He had spent many comfortable evenings engaged in quiet conversation with his friend in this very room and so to push open the door and walk in should not have felt awkward. Yuuri should not be hesitating. His hand should not be shaking as it reached for the doorknob. His angry resolve to have it out with Houju had fallen away during his march down the hall. Now, he was simply Yuuri Kei again, and he suddenly felt as though that was not much to take into battle against a man like Minister Kou.

As the door pushed open, a cold breeze caught Yuuri on the face, like cold fingers cupping his cheeks. A dusky gloom overcast the room, even though he could see bright sunshine just on the other side of the ceiling-to-floor draperies lining a far wall.

He took two steps into the room and something crunched under his feet. He looked down and saw shards of something broken and scattered on the delicate carpets.

"I said I didn't want to see you," a deep voice came from somewhere in front of Yuuri. He squinted into the twilight to make out a hand, just visible beyond the back of a chair, gripping its arm.

"I've brought you something. The…the mail," Yuuri replied brightly, trying not to be disturbed by the unfamiliar coldness of his friend's voice. "I wanted to see if you need anything…if you're well."

"Then if you're satisfied, please leave," Houju answered.

"Did you think this would satisfy me?" Yuuri demanded after an affronted pause, spurred on by the vacant feeling swelling in his chest as he felt Houju slipping away from him. He stepped forward to close the space between them and crunched on the same strange substance with each step until he stopped, perplexed. "What in the world...?" he muttered to himself.

He peered down at the floor, but couldn't make out anything in the muted light. Chunks of something. He leaned down and picked up a colorful shard, bringing it up close to his face. Recognition dawned on him. He'd seen this before. He bent again and picked up another piece. This too he knew.

"What have you done?" Yuuri asked breathlessly, crossing the room with more urgency, ignoring the crunching under his feet.

He walked past the chair where Houju sat facing the windows and reached up to yank open the long, heavy drapes that blocked the light from the room. Glaring sunshine fell across his friend's form, slumped in the chair, and he shielded his face.

Yuuri's jaw dropped as his eyes traveled around the room, littered in the shattered remains of every single mask Reishin had ever made for "Kijn," the famous masked official at the emperor's court. Years of work, of friendship, of celebrations and tragedies were all captured in those masks. The panorama of emotions that Houju kept locked inside him had been drawn out and painted on those masks, and Houju had worn each one proudly.

"I thought…you cherished those masks," Yuuri remarked softly, dumbfounded, grieved at their loss as though their destruction erased all they represented.

For Houju to have destroyed these little pieces of his heart would have taken an unthinkable shift in character. If he was capable of this, Yuuri wondered, how expendable might he himself be. He swallowed a lump in his throat and darted a look at the being in the chair that resembled his friend. Bitter satisfaction painted Houju's unmasked face in colors that obscured his indelible beauty. It was a face Yuuri didn't know.

"I want…" he swallowed nervously and moved to stand beside Houju's chair. "I want you to come back to work. I want you to leave this room. Leave this behind you."

Hesitantly, he reached a hand out and rested it on the shoulder shrugged up in the chair. He ventured an urgent squeeze, words now uncertain between the old friends. His hand fell to his side. After a long and painful silence, he added. "I choose you, Houju. I always will."

He moved to leave, but stopped and turned back. "I almost forgot my purpose in coming here," he smiled sheepishly, forcing a grin that didn't reach to his eyes. "A package came for you." He held it out, but Houju still didn't move. Yuuri sighed sadly and gently placed the box on his friend's lap.

"See you soon," he added hopefully and left the room.

When the door closed behind him, Houju slowly sat up in the chair. His weary, bloodshot eyes glanced down at the lavish box resting in his lap. Clumsy fingers tugged halfheartedly at the ties encasing the box, pushed aside the lid and fumbled through the packing inside. Then, he held perfectly still for a long time. Tears welled up in his eyes and fell in splatters on the box and its contents. His long, elegant fingers swept slowly over the perfect curves and smooth lines. He withdrew a small card from the box and blinked to clear his eyes so he could read.

"The 'My-Best-Friend-Knows-Me-Best' Mask. Baka."

He clenched his eyes shut and then a short, hoarse laugh rumbled up from his chest. He lifted the mask out of the box, cradling it carefully in his soft hands. The finish glimmered in the afternoon sun. It felt light, lighter than any other that fool had ever made. It would be good for summer.

He tipped it to the left and right, watching the light gleam across the plain, creamy white surface. It was so simple. So beautiful. So perfect. The entire pseudo-face was painted in a luminescent, breathtakingly pure white, and beneath the left eye perched a single crimson tear. Houju wept for a long time until he had purged himself of every lost hope and abandoned dream he had ever harbored for himself and that idiot of a friend he foolishly placed above all others.

When there was nothing left to do but go on, Houju stood up from his chair, mask in hand, and crossed the room, gingerly through the broken pieces of his love scattered all around, toward an empty wall in a prominent place in the room. He brushed a hand slowly across the wall until he felt a hook protruding from the surface. With a last look and a wistful smile, he placed the mask carefully on the hook and stood back to survey it proudly.

"Yuuri, forgive me," he mumbled to himself and smirked again at the face of purest sorrow that waited patiently for its master's return to the living world. "Tomorrow," Houju told the lone mask, and then summoned his servants to help him set his house in order again.


End file.
